[aleonx3]

Changing focus point... you can use a touchscreen for that, and also it can skip through the points pretty fast and always bundle like 10 together (you move them around one by one, but the ones around it are also selected). Not too much of an issue IMHO.

I am always intrigued by this...."changing focus points in a cluttered viewfinder or on touchscreen" as one of advantage points in the Canikon world.

-how do I pick only the spot on the eye (focus point-5th one on 2nd row) with my fat finger on the touch-screen?
-what is the advantage of picking 10 focus points together vs using another camera (like Pentax) with larger and fewer focus points?
-although I can see the advantage with focus tracking when the subject is locked in AF-C function.

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Last edited by aleonx3; 12-04-2014 at 08:48 AM.

[monochrome]

That's a good summary. I find the OVF/EVF debate less straightforward than most. My take on it:

OVF -- We see the image as it actually exists and then we set the camera up so to have the sensor record it as closely as we see it.

EVF -- We see a displayed representation of what is actually hitting the sensor which is not the same thing as what the sensor is recording. This representation will be limited by the ability of the display mechanism which, as far as I know, will always be less than the recording capabilities of the sensor itself. They are getting better, though.

I'm partial to the concept behind the OVF but that's not an ironclad prerequisite in a camera (to me).

Best contrast of active/passive I've read yet.

I prefer to understand the camera and set it so that what I see is how it is recorded. More power to some Sony or Samsung software engineer for programming that step, but I want to do it and nothing will change my mind.

And I don't enjoy being told I am wrong for wanting to do that.

[derekkite]

LOL! Be carefull before this starts a new rumor.

Actually, all Pentaxians have been asking for for the past decade is an FF sensor camera for their excellent FF Pentax lenses, but got all kinds of high end cost increasing incredible features for APS-C instead. Personally, if I didn't already have FF, I'd still buy a Pentax 24mp FF, with 1/2000 max shutter speed, max ISO 1600, no SR and crappy AF with a really good pricetag. Regardless if it has a mirror or not. The mirror, or absence of it, is actually so unimportant. I bought the A7r because it came closest to the thing I described. (Sans the nice pricetag of course.)

The K-3 was cheaper on release than the K-5.

From what I see finally the A7S equals the basic function of a DSLR when it comes to viewfinder and focus. We shall see what it looks like once it is in the field in numbers. Same with the Samsung. I suspect Canon, Nikon and Ricoh didn't want to downgrade their customer experience by releasing something that didn't work as well as their existing products.

---------- Post added 12-04-14 at 08:19 AM ----------

I get the point for burst... The question is if your camera can burst anywhere from 1 photo per second to 1000 photos per second what setting will you use? 3 shoots per seconds? 8 shoots per second ? 15? Or why not even more 50 or 100 ? My understanding is that actions shooters prefer D7100 to K3 because of better tracking and faster AF (and lenses that are also actually faster to react). still D7100 has less FPS than K3. While 15FPS is a great technicall achievement (if it really work in practice), I'am not sure it is near as a practical improvement than going from 3 to 6 fps. With already 8fps for the K3, I'am not sure that there a big need for more outside of a few very specific cases.

As for the action shooter with the possibility to send the photo instantly to an editor, it does exist... For Olympics or things like that. I wonder through how many photographer actually use the feature in practice? 1 out of 1000 ?

15 fps burst is fine, but for how long? 2 seconds? 1.5? 10? A spec that is meaningless except as a concept. The burst plus buffer clearing time is what counts. A short burst very quick then a longish wait would make you yearn for a setting to slow it down.

[eddie1960]

15 fps burst is fine, but for how long? 2 seconds? 1.5? 10? A spec that is meaningless except as a concept. The burst plus buffer clearing time is what counts. A short burst very quick then a longish wait would make you yearn for a setting to slow it down.

I tried out the burst on my fuji, there are 2 settings, the fast burst is fast (and pretty good in conjunction with continuous focus) but boy clearing the buffer sucks. the slower setting is a better balance and shorter wait. I hardly use burst but was shooting a drummer from side stage and having a hard time getting a shot since he was frequently turned away

[monochrome]

If its mirrorless anyway why not just shoot video at 24 fps and clip individual frames?

I tried out the burst on my fuji, there are 2 settings, the fast burst is fast (and pretty good in conjunction with continuous focus) but boy clearing the buffer sucks. the slower setting is a better balance and shorter wait. I hardly use burst but was shooting a drummer from side stage and having a hard time getting a shot since he was frequently turned away

[LensBeginner]

If its mirrorless anyway why not just shoot video at 24 fps and clip individual frames?

ehr... because resolution is lower & you lose a lot of information with chroma encoding in video? am I missing something?

[devorama]

I have a Sony NEX-6 with the compact 16-50mm lens and a small but very capable Nissin i40 flash that is much smaller and lighter than my K-3 with DA 18-55 and AF360FGZ II. For casual parties/events, I think the size and weight of the Sony combo win out over the improved handling of the Pentax. The times I prefer my dslr are when shooting more studio situations or when I need the weather sealing features. I tried using the NEX-6 for a photoshoot, but I found the autofocus to be a bit lacking. Also, I have a bunch of more specialized lenses for the Pentax for specific shots like ultra-wide angle or very shallow DoF.

When a friend asks me advice on camera buying, I always ask if they want to learn about photography, or just want better quality photos using automatic modes. If they say they want to learn, I usually steer them towards a Pentax. But if they just want better photos and never leave the auto modes, I tell them to buy a Sony mirrorless camera.

[monochrome]

<sarc>

If its mirrorless anyway why not just shoot video at 24 fps and clip individual frames?

</sarc>

ehr... because resolution is lower & you lose a lot of information with chroma encoding in video? am I missing something?

Oops. Forgot tags.

[Nicolas06]

And again you are missing the point. What phones do or don't do isn't relative to the point. Battery life will also evolve as cameras demand more power in a smaller form. Since you want to use a phone reference, take a look at phone batteries 10 years ago compared to today. Also look at changes in processors that draw a fraction of the power that they use to while providing significantly more processing power. Nothing evolves in a vacuum.

Old phones can stay 1 week or 2 without a charge. Latest smartphone if the new feature are really used can go 1 day. To have my current SmartPhone to keep long I just disable most of the crap like all the time geolocalization, automatic mail updates and so own... And it last a few days because I only occassionnaly use the "smart" part of my phone. Just talk to the guys that say go on public transportation and use the phone to spend time here (games, reading news...) and ask them of the autonomy. It more arround a day. Less if the phone was used intensively and you need to recharge at work.

There almost no progress on battery and this is the biggest problem all mobile devices face. Computer faced the problem earlier as it become nearly impossible to cool down big chips even through you are not that much limiting in power consumption.

It's not about "better" it about seeing the image exactly as the sensor sees it.

The sensor see a raw without white balence applyed. What you see in the viewfinder is a JPEG using the in-body derawtiser. The same is with the histogram. Screens do not display the raw information.

If you shoot a gray card at sunrise or sunset do you know what happens to your white balance? Yes. You can fix everything in post. That't not the point.

They 2 possibilities for me:
- the white balance computed by the camera is ok and so the JPEG or RAW will look just fine.
- the white balance is wrong and then it migth not be that easy to set the good white balance... In particular while takings shoots and looking through the viewfinder. That may be your prefered solution, not sure that work that well overall.

Sports and News photographers don't spend much time processing images. News photographers are typically shooting JPEG and uploading them before they are old news. You might not realize this but there is a huge percentage of the professional photographic community that either shoots JPEG or batch processes RAW files with presets.

Then they need to get good shoot from the first time and cannot really take time to change setting constantly in their camera. Many of theses guys will just trash the bad shoots anway.

In the near future your camera will have more processing power than the computer you are currently using. The Samsung NX-1 already has more power than most laptops or
tablets. We are talking about the future, not what your computer can do today.

Don't be manipulated by marketing departement. They want to explain that because they provide multicore and big frequency numbers or whatever that their ARM processor is fast. A typicall desktop processor is 4-5 time more powerfull than the best ARM ship for general purpose computation. Small latop are slow because one don't need the horse power and the battery become a problem again. Big latop are quite fast and typicall desktop is even faster.

An example: Computing Compendium: Arm vs Intel Benchmarks. A typicall destop computer is 4-5 time faster than the faster ARM chip for general purpose computation.

And worse, if the mobile processor inside the camera or phone has to be 100% busy all the time, it'll drain the batery in 1 hour or less. You can use this power only for small unit of time if you don't want to spend you shooting day changing batteries (or wired in a studio).


I checked the topic on mobile processor performance quite a few time already and they are at the same state as desktop: they cannot significantly improve performance that much anymore because it mean basically increasing frequency and power consumption. They go for more and more cores and get less and less subtancial gains. For that reason there no much insentive to buy new Smartphones/tablet. The new ones are only marginally faster.

So yes there dedicated hardware to do some task on camera/phone and so own to conpensate. Like there are on desktop. Thoses are not the same type. Desktop will have a graphic card to make drawing while the camera may have an H264 encoder. Try to use your camera processor to play the latest game or perform a scientific computing and you will be pretty disapointed. Still add a decent graphic card to your desktop and you'll get hundred times the raw processing power of the camera/smartphone if that's important to you.

There are a large number of working photographers who travel and can't carry around a pair of 27" Ezio Color Edge Monitors and tower. Last time I was in New York I had coffee with two professionals who are using mirrorless cameras, iPads, & Adobe Cloud to do the majority of their work. I don't know exactly how that works, but they were very happy with the quality and faster workflow. I'm still pretty happy with my 2 monitors and tower, but the industry is very diverse.

I agree but if your notice they didn't use their camera for that. It might evolve for sure... But that a complex topic... Camera ergonomics are not exactly optimized for post processing. Next time you meet them you can ask them if they feel like they would prefer to do that in camera through the viewfinder.

I know. I'm trying to explain it to people how much of a step forward the NX-1 is in terms of camera technology. There are many reasons why the camera might no sell well, but its still impressive.

Because it has 50% faster FPS than other cameras and more raw processing power ?

Or because it take visibly better photos than others cameras? I

mean I buy camera to take photos. Not to compute the 1000 decimal of pi or performing molecular simulations.

[monochrome]

I have a Sony NEX-6 with the compact 16-50mm lens and a small but very capable Nissin i40 flash that is much smaller and lighter than my K-3 with DA 18-55 and AF360FGZ II. For casual parties/events, I think the size and weight of the Sony combo win out over the improved handling of the Pentax. The times I prefer my dslr are when shooting more studio situations or when I need the weather sealing features. I tried using the NEX-6 for a photoshoot, but I found the autofocus to be a bit lacking. Also, I have a bunch of more specialized lenses for the Pentax for specific shots like ultra-wide angle or very shallow DoF.

When a friend asks me advice on camera buying, I always ask if they want to learn about photography, or just want better quality photos using automatic modes. If they say they want to learn, I usually steer them towards a Pentax. But if they just want better photos and never leave the auto modes, I tell them to buy a Sony mirrorless camera.

For situations where small is a real benefit I have a Q7 and 01. For party shots I've never felt limited by the image quality of the Q7.

I note that a Q7 qualifies as a proper mirrorless interchangeable lens system camera.

[osv]

What, the Alpha lenses, Osv? You'd be nuts to start buying into them.
Alpha is a corpse swinging in the wind, unfortunately for all those buyers who trusted Sony to look after the Minolta legacy.

eleven ff f/2.8 zooms for sale at b&h proves you wrong.

compared to only three ff f/2.8 k-mount zooms, none made by pentax... k-mount is dying! why hope for a ff k-mount camera that won't have any glass to put on it?

As for that crap SLT adapter - lose 30% of your FF light,

you lose 1/3-1/2ev, not "30% of your ff light" certainly the most ignorant claim that you've made yet!

you don't know anything about sony at all.

Sony have released a truckload of new models over the past three years, but sales are down, not up, and will continue that way. That is all.

dslr sales are down across the board, and all predictions are that they will continue to go down.

thank goodness sony gives us a lot more choice than we could ever get with pentax!

---------- Post added 12-04-2014 at 10:51 AM ----------

It was say by some that the K3 was 1.2kg and the A7 + converter half of it.

In practice A7II and K3 are very similar weigh when you add the converter to have access to some AF lense echosystem. I agree then you could use f/2.8 zooms on FF and so on but as say you hand up very similar weigth in the end.

the main point remains that pentax doesn't have anything approaching a ff f/2.8 zoom, and compared to the eleven ff f/2.8 zooms available on the sony platform, it's obvious that pentax isn't going anywhere with a ff offering, even if they released a ff body today.

you and poor quackers are both trying to obfusticate the facts by arguing about weight and meaningless light loss, when it's not relevant to the real issues.

the fact that the tamron 150-600 ff zoom was released in a sony mount but not a k-mount, spells it out perfectly.

tamron did that because the market for sony a-mount is bigger than the market for k-mount... yet quackers is out here claiming that a-mount is dead

---------- Post added 12-04-2014 at 10:59 AM ----------

I note that a Q7 qualifies as a proper mirrorless interchangeable lens system camera.

"While the lack of a viewfinder may not be a major issue for casual shooters, it is a huge drawback when using the Q7 with adapted lenses, as both framing and focus becomes a hassle. We remain hopeful that Pentax will add an electronic viewfinder to future generations of the Q family."

Read more at: Review: Pentax Q7 - Construction and Handling | PentaxForums.com Reviews

[LensBeginner]

<sarc> </sarc>

Oops. Forgot tags.

I was actually missing something then!
Well, there are already cameras that allow you to get 8MP stills from 4k footage, I remember reading that about a new piece of hardware recently...
If price is not an issue, why not...

Edit: seen now that the GH4 can do that... wonder what's the quality like... the one I read about however was something along the lines of a blackmagic or red... can't remember now...

[Rondec]

Where's jogiba when you need him?

[Nicolas06]

eleven ff f/2.8 zooms for sale at b&h proves you wrong.

compared to only three ff f/2.8 k-mount zooms, none made by pentax... k-mount is dying! why hope for a ff k-mount camera that won't have any glass to put on it?
[...]
the main point remains that pentax doesn't have anything approaching a ff f/2.8 zoom, and compared to the eleven ff f/2.8 zooms available on the sony platform, it's obvious that pentax isn't going anywhere with a ff offering, even if they released a ff body today.

Ask question to FE shooter than don't enjoy putting converters. At least the native K-mount lenses are available some co-designed by Pentax, some offered by third party. So this give you 16-50, a few 17-50, 24-70, 28-75, 50-135, a few 70-200. FE mount must be dying to not have any lenses by Sigma/Tamron natively...

dslr sales are down across the board, and all predictions are that they will continue to go down

Still sale of Ricoh and Canon increase. Not everybody manage things the same.

thank goodness sony gives us a lot more choice than we could ever get with pentax!

Choice is always good, we are better with both than with just one of the 2, that for sure. I mean you don't have to use K3, and I don't have to use A7

you and poor quackers are both trying to obfusticate the facts by arguing about weight and meaningless light loss, when it's not relevant to the real issues.

You argued about weight trying to prove something but you number where wrong and mislading, you even recognized it. We didn't want to let pass wrong information. You could dislike what we provided, but that's accurate. Everybody can then conclude from the real numbers.

the fact that the tamron 150-600 ff zoom was released in a sony mount but not a k-mount, spells it out perfectly.

Not available on FE mount neither.

tamron did that because the market for sony a-mount is bigger than the market for k-mount... yet quackers is out here claiming that a-mount is dead

Or maybe because Sony own part of tamron ? Like all the Zeiss lenses... It is not like Zeiss like Sony that much. They use the brand but not all the Zeiss branded lenses that Sony ask to have are that good.

[osv]

Ask question to FE shooter than don't enjoy putting converters.

you've never even shot a real mirrorless camera before, so how would you know what "fe shooters" want

At least the native K-mount lenses are available some co-designed by Pentax, some offered by third party. So this give you 16-50, a few 17-50, 24-70, 28-75, 50-135, a few 70-200.

i think that i can shoot all that on my a7r, right now?

you can't do any kind of ff shooting, period.

Still sale of Ricoh and Canon increase. Not everybody manage things the same.

prove it.